Inside the bedroom they helped her sit on the side of the bed, and Sherry started removing her clothes. “You want to soak in your big wonderful tub with some eucalyptus oil? Hmmm?”
Nina lifted her head and looked Sherry in the eye. “Yes, I’d like that.”
Sherry perked up. “You want to have the water run before you get in or after?”
“After. I’ll add the oil.”
“Well, all righty then!”
Thomas paced in the living area and made a sudden stop as Sherry reappeared. “What the hell? Did she say anything about what happened?”
Sherry shook her head and put her finger to her lips. “Shhhh! I don’t want her to hear. You know how sound carries on the brick walls in this place.”
“Yeah, I do,” he answered in a whisper, “but she’s in bad shape. I’ve never seen her like this—it scares me. Is it some kind of nervous breakdown or what? What should we do?” The frantic tone reverberated off the bricks.
“I don’t know, but at least she was able to tell me she wanted to get in her tub and that she’d put the eucalyptus in the water herself. It’s a start. Let’s see how she is after her bath, and we’ll take it from there.”
“Do you think Judson did something to her? She’s pretty beat up, and the mental state she’s in…I’ll kill him if he hurt her,” Thomas roared, obviously overcome with worry and anger.
“Shhh! Dammit!” Sherry scolded.
In the warmth of her tub, Nina heard every word and squeezed her eyelids together against the pain pummeling what remained of her heart.
She was the one who should be killed, not Judson.
Oh, God, her beloved Judson…
Chapter Sixteen
“Hello?” Sherry’s voice sounded small when she answered Nina’s cell.
“Who’s speaking?” Judson asked, exhausted physically, mentally, but mostly emotionally.
“Judson? Is that you?” Sherry asked, cupping her hand over Nina’s phone.
“Yes, who’s this? Where’s Nina?” He sounded like a nut-job, but he didn’t care.
“Judson, this is Sherry. There’s been some sort of accident. I–I’m not sure what, but something’s happened to her. We were just getting ready to try to find your number.”
“Accident! Where is she?” He would go there this minute! Dear God, please let her be all right. “Oh, God, is she all right?” The frantic words snapped through the phone.
“She called Thomas from Hulen Mall in Fort Worth. She was disoriented and mumbling. He got over there and found her collapsed under the awning of a closed shop. Her chin and knee are in pretty bad shape.”
“Her chin and knee?” Judson heaved a sigh of relief.
“Yeah, they probably both need stitches. I’m getting someone over here to do that, but that’s not the worst of it. She’s had, we think, she’s had some sort of nervous breakdown.”
“What? What do you mean? I’m coming—”
“No! I mean, that’s not a good idea, Judson. She said something to Thomas about Bill Simpson killing your daddy? She said it over the phone when she called Thomas to come get her, but nothing else about it since. Is that true?”
“I’m coming to wherever she is, Sherry. Where the hell is she?” He had to get to Nina before he lost his mind.
“Judson, she’s…not in any shape to see anyone right now. Look, let us try to get things under control first. Maybe tomorrow will be better.”
“I’m flying out at five in the morning. I can’t do that until I’ve seen Nina. I can’t…” The words rang with desperation.
“That’s right, I forgot. You’ve got a modeling shoot in New York.” Sherry paused. “Look, I promise I’ll keep you informed about what’s going on, but if you love Nina, and it’s obvious you do, please give her some time. I’m begging you. How long are you going to be away?”
“Two weeks.”
“Okay, good, that’ll give her”—Sherry stopped to count on her fingers—“fourteen days. Just promise me you’ll let her have this time to deal with whatever happened.”
Silence.
“Judson? Are you there?”
“Yeah.”
“I will tell you, this is serious. Please help us help her. Please give her some time. It’s important. Now that I have your number, I will keep you informed by text or voice, whatever you want.”
Silence.
“Please, Judson,” Sherry pled.
“I’ll try, but I won’t promise.”
“That’s all I ask of you, Judson, is that you try. For Nina.”
Judson disconnected and looked at his mother, who stood in the kitchen doorway that led to the garage.
“Is she all right?” Worry tinged the sweet eyes.
“No. She’s not,” he answered in a ragged voice.
“Tell me.”
“Sherry, one of her partners, said she appears to have had some kind of nervous breakdown.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know, Sherry would only say that Thomas, the other partner, picked her up at the Hulen Mall. She called him on her cell, but she hasn’t answered the million calls I’ve made to her.” He pushed shaking fingers through his hair.
Theresa went to her distraught son and put a hand on his slumped shoulder. “Son, we’ll get through this. We, and that includes Nina, will get through this.” She gave his shoulder a soft shake to emphasize the last words. “We’ve gotten through a lot of things in this life so far, haven’t we?”
He gave her a little nod.
“And we will again. Together as a family.”
Judson’s bloodshot eyes met those of his mother, the eyes that had reassured and comforted him all his life.
“I can’t lose her, Mom. I can’t let that bastard Simpson do this to me or her again.”
“You’re not going to lose her, Judson. Nina loves you. Even in the couple of hours I spent with the two of you, I saw it. And I know you. Nina’s the one. I don’t know how, but we’ll fix this. For all of us. We will. Now, let’s sit for a moment and talk…”
* * * *
Judson drove home in dogged silence, still not sure he was going to board his flight in the morning, actually a few hours from now. How could he when Nina suffered, and he knew, punished herself for sins not committed by her?
They’d not gotten to the point yet where they discussed their childhoods in depth, but he knew now why they both refused to drink, why she seemed to want to distance herself from Fort Worth or the time she’d grown up there, why she’d taken her real father’s name back. Bill Simpson had been allowed by Nina’s mother to inflict his twisted way of life on her daughter. Now the ugliness he’d perpetuated in life rose up from the grave to torture Nina again.
She’d covered his scar in kisses, trying to kiss away something she knew nothing about, only that it had scarred him. The scar she bore from the same tragic event was on her soul, her psyche, her life. They’d both carried this burden since that time without even knowing one another existed, and now it had come to this.
“Why?” His fists landed hard on the steering wheel as he roared the question. Then the tears came. He sobbed as he hadn’t sobbed since that night in 1998 as he watched his father die.
He would not allow Bill Simpson to take his dad and his Nina away from him. The bastard wasn’t going to be given that pleasure from his well-deserved place in hell.
* * * *
Judson managed to make his flight, mainly because his mother called him at three o’clock and threatened to wake Sammy and deliver Judson to the airport herself. He knew she meant it. As tender a person as she was, she had a steely resolve that no one seemed to be able to bend.
Being enclosed in a tube for hours never excited him, but now he felt caged, trapped in a vacuum that took him far away from Nina when he needed to be with her. Even as the aircraft sped in the opposite direction of where she lay broken, he felt her, longed for her, couldn’t go forward until he heard her voice. Things were going too
fast and too slow at the same time.
Last night and on his way to the airport, he’d listened over and over to voicemails from her that he’d saved on his cell phone just because he loved the sound of her voice. “Hello, my love. I’m actually going to get to see you in twenty-two minutes! I love you.”
Dear, God, he loved this woman. Please, please, please…
He trusted Sherry and Thomas, saw very clearly the way they cared for and about Nina. They’d both texted him during the late night and early morning with steady reports on Nina’s progress, even when there was none. Thomas was clearly freaked. Judson could tell by his texts, and hearing Sherry’s voice last night had told him she was scared for Nina. So he would do as they asked and give her time for as long as he could stand it.
God, the way she’d looked when the three of them had put things together, that her stepdad had been the drunk who killed his father. He’d feared for her then. When Nina vanished last night, and he couldn’t find her, stone-cold fear nearly paralyzed him. It nearly paralyzed him now.
He’d spent hours walking, driving, searching for her. He still couldn’t believe she’d made it all the way to the mall. He was thankful no one had abducted her on the way, or worse. There was no such place as a safe place anymore. He knew she blamed herself for his dad, for Sammy…for him and this damned scar. Again he thought of the way she’d smothered it with kisses and hadn’t made him talk about it. Tears stung his eyes with the mere memory, with what he knew now about her unseen scars, how deeply they tore into her at this very moment.
He had told her of the guilt he carried for surviving unscathed while Sammy hadn’t been so fortunate. Now she would put that one on herself, too.
He clutched at the armrest of his seat, feeling the crazy threatening to surface within him again. He wasn’t going to be able to stay in New York and away from Nina for two weeks. He wasn’t going to be able to stop himself from calling her. He wasn’t going to be able to stay away.
He wasn’t…
Chapter Seventeen
Nina sat in front of the ceiling-to-floor corner windows of her living room, thinking. Again. Sherry and Thomas insisted that everything was covered at the studio. All the trailers for Deannie and her publisher, Love and Romance, were complete. There were just a few edits left to do on the oil-company videos, and she could take a look at them at home or at the studio if she wanted to get out and about, which she didn’t. But the time had come to fire up her laptop. Had it really been nearly two weeks since she’d been on a computer?
Other than him calling that night and speaking to Sherry and Thomas, she hadn’t heard from Judson. She’d known she wouldn’t. He probably felt better when he’d discovered she left his mother’s house on her own. He’d done the right thing and checked on her that night, but after that, never had to see her again. Seeing the undiluted agony on his face and in his extraordinary eyes when everything came down had been branded on her brain. She knew he’d felt disgust at having made love to the daughter of his father’s killer, his brother’s disabler. Stepdaughter, she corrected herself. But what did it matter? Bill was the man that had raised her, he and her drunk mother, who’d defended him at all costs while everyone laughed at what a fool she was for doing it.
Of course Nina had changed her name when she’d turned eighteen, anything to distance herself from Bill Simpson. Graham, the surname of her real father, the husband and father that would have loved her and her mother, felt more natural on her anyway. Her father’s sudden death pushed her mother to the alcohol and into the arms of Bill Simpson. Why would she choose to carry that name?
Oh, Judson, how differently things could have turned out! For both of us…
The name Brennon would have gotten Nina’s attention if he’d used it, but she realized a lot of models and celebrities didn’t use their real names. Judson Lane. It had a true ring to it and matched his fabulous, sexy look. Amazing how something so simple as a name change could put a serious twist on the paths people chose to walk.
The doorbell sounded, and she looked at the clock. Eleven ten. Nina forced herself to answer it. Cookie had caught word that Nina wasn’t well and sent box lunches every day, via Sherry or Thomas, who each tried to force her to eat. So far she’d only taken a few bites here and there, and that wasn’t respectful of Cookie.
The wooden door squeaked as Nina pulled it open to reveal Kathleen, the one who’d stitched her knee and chin that first horrible night.
“Hi, Nina, I hope I’m not bothering you,” Kathleen said and held up the little medical bag she’d used when she was a flight paramedic.
“No. No bother. Come on in.” Nina left the door open and went back to her perch in front of the windows.
Kathleen quietly closed the door and followed. “How’s the chin feeling?”
“Better.”
“The knee?”
“So-so.”
“The soul?”
Nina shot Kathleen a sideways glance but didn’t answer.
Without saying more Kathleen examined Nina’s chin. “This looks really good, Nina. I don’t think it’ll scar. Keep applying the ointment. Let’s take a look at the knee.”
Nina contemplated her peaceful eyes as Kathleen raised the peasant skirt Nina practically lived in to her mid-thigh and removed the bandage from her knee ever so slowly, her lips in a straight line as she concentrated.
“I no longer have a soul,” Nina whispered. She didn’t even put effort into stopping the liquid grief that began its familiar slide down her face.
“Oh, yeah, it’s still in there somewhere.” Kathleen finished removing the bandage. “This knee is healing up really well! I think we can leave the bandage off now. Keep the ointment on it, too.” Kathleen tilted her face up to look at Nina and dab fresh tears away from the almost-healed chin injury with a tissue.
“Okay,” Nina answered.
Kathleen pulled up a comfortable chair that matched Nina’s, took a seat, and leaned back, watching birds flit and dive across the sky. A slight smile came across her lips.
Nina followed her gaze. “Maybe next time I’ll be a bird,” she commented wistfully.
“Birds sometimes have pretty hard times, too, though. Any living creature who chooses to take material form on this planet is subjected to the laws of nature, you know. And they do still have to make choices, just like the rest of us.”
“I guess so, but they can fly away whenever they want to.”
“So can we. We can do it physically as well as mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. We actually have many more options than birds do.” Kathleen’s tone was so even, so calm yet so matter-of-fact.
“And you think I’m doing the mental, emotional, and spiritual flying-away thing,” Nina stated.
“Not at all. I think you’re roosting in your nest while you try to figure all this out. Nothing wrong with that. See, that’s another thing we have over the birds. We have the ability to figure things out, and all they have is natural instinct. They can’t always comprehend that they’re flying right into a pile of hunters waiting with guns, can they?”
Nina thought about this for a few seconds and continued to squint out the window.
“No, I guess they can’t.” She turned to look Kathleen full in the face. “I knew not to get involved with Judson, I knew not to. That intuitive thing you’re so big on told me not to!”
“I disagree,” Kathleen said.
“What do you mean?” Nina couldn’t help but ask.
“It was your intuition that led you straight into his arms. You knew what kind of person he was and that you belonged together. It was your human mind that told you not to give in to what you knew intuitively, what you knew on a purely spiritual level.”
“But you don’t know…”
“Yes, I do. There was nothing you could do to stop an alcohol-addicted man, who happened to be your mother’s husband.”
“I could have killed him. One night he passed out in his chair, snoring and drooling, an
d I thought real hard about stabbing him through the heart with a big kitchen knife I’d been eyeing for a while, with exactly that in mind. I should have…”
“That would have put a huge black spot on your karma. If you think things are bad now, you wouldn’t have been able to bear what would have come from that. Judson couldn’t have, either.”
“It couldn’t be worse than this, Kathleen. How could it be?” Nina straightened in the chair. This conversation had her complete attention.
“If Bill hadn’t come along that night, there could have been another night. And on that other night, Judson, his brother, and his dad all could have been taken. Maybe his mother, too.”
Nina let this sink in.
“Or, when the time for Judson’s dad to leave came, as it had come that night, it could have been from cancer or some other horrible situation that would have devastated the family even more. Have you ever watched someone lie dying, being eaten alive? The sight, feel, and memory of it never leave you.”
She looked over at Kathleen. “I think I see. But those things didn’t happen. This happened.”
“Yes, it did. Now the choice is yours. You can either keep hanging on to it for the rest of your life and letting it ruin the beautiful reality you have created for yourself with your work. With Judson…Or you can accept the blessings that have come in spite, or maybe even because of, what happened. You could live your life in joy without the past dictating where you go, what you think, how you feel. But it’s up to you. Don’t you think Judson, especially after all he’s been through, has a right to a say-so in how this turns out?” Kathleen’s raised brow indicated her opinion in the matter.
The door bell rang. Nina slumped.
“I’ll get it. I have a massage in twenty minutes, and I need to get ready for my client. I hope I haven’t upset or bothered you. I felt compelled to come check on you. Chin looks great, keep applying the ointment, leave the knee bandage off for now, and we’ll check it tonight if that’s all right?”
Hatten, Catherine - Trailer Trash [Deep Ellum] (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Page 12
